chapter one
"Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable.
However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than
those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable."
— Lord Chesterfield
The Invictus is the oldest covenant, dating back to ancient Rome and the nights of the Camarilla. The covenant has persisted since those first nights, its longevity and power demonstrating the fundamental truth of its precepts. It has seen other covenants come and go, and will do so again. The Invictus is unconquered and invincible.
That is the official attitude of Invictus history, and many members of the covenant see no profit in investigating in more detail. Even some vampires outside the covenant accept the basic accounts of the Invictus’ history, although many see stagnation where the Invictus sees strong tradition. Yet for all the shadows of torpor and the failings of Kindred memory, there are elders who remember traces of detail and believe that such things matter as much to the success of the covenant as its modern nights. Likewise, the formalities of the Invictus generate many written records — some trustworthy and some suspect — and many Kindred of the First Estate choose to busy themselves with historical research.
All this gives the Invictus of many domains access to centuries of information, but it does not always bring the truth. A detailed history does not overturn the fundamental points of public perception. The record that remembers a true history is often overlooked in favor of the record that describes a preferred history.
The Invictus is ancient and deeply conservative. Its customs and traditions have survived two thousand years of daylight and fire, dissention and insurgence. Its name is known and feared by some of the world’s most terrible monsters, from the cold glass of the Atlantic domains to the hot lights of the Pacific Rim. Though the Invictus is often misunderstood and sometimes despised, it cannot be ignored or denied. Even external historians concede that the Invictus must be doing something right.
Classical Beginnings
“I, Marcus Didianus Scipio of Milan, hereby grant Marinus of the Invictus exclusive hunting rights among the tenements of the East bank of the river, to be held for as long as his House persists . . . ”
The oldest demonstrably genuine Kindred document mentioning the Invictus is a grant of hunting rights to House Marinus — rights that the House still holds and defends whenever challenged. The grant is thought to have been made in AD 84, when the Camarilla still held
sway in Rome, and the document has been produced for inspection by Invictus vampires in the court of Milan at least once per century since. The Kindred of the Marinus line claim that the Invictus of the time were a ruling class of the Camarilla, the unconquered Kindred who had risen to the top of the organization. Commonly, covenant authorities officially endorse this view.
Unofficially, many historians in and out of the Invictus doubt that claim. The reference to the Invictus in the grant sounds more like a faction than a name for the rulers of the world’s Kindred, and there is precious little supporting evidence outside of the fog of Kindred memory. Indeed, though there are other surviving documents from the period, there are no known earlier references to the name. The memories of other elders suggest the Invictus were simply a group of Kindred seeking power within the Camarilla, much like the factions of the Invictus tonight, albeit a group that was ultimately to see great success.
THE PRIVILEGES OF CAESAR
A set of marble tablets, supposedly held by the Invictus of Rome, carry an inscription granting the Invictus rulership of the night as Gaius Julius Caesar holds command over the day. The Latin of the inscription is appropriate to the late Republic, and the tablets have unquestionably existed in their present form since the early Middle Ages. The covenant, outside Rome, has never officially endorsed the tablets, which leads most Kindred to believe that the rulers of the Invictus suspect that they are forgeries.
Another theory, however, is that the tablets are genuine, and that the Invictus elders still include Kindred responsible for breaching the Masquerade to the extent of forming an explicit treaty with the kine. Some Carthians who would love to turn the Invictus’ past into a tool for unseating some of its greatest elders have spent time searching for supporting evidence showing that the privileges are genuine trespasses against the Traditions.
Ancient Lies
Whatever the details, the evidence that the Invictus existed in some form before the fall of the Camarilla is overwhelming. If nothing else, the speed with which the covenant was able to take advantage of the power vacuum left
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by the collapse of an over-arching structure indicates that the Invictus was already organized to a large extent. Some Kindred believe that the Invictus deliberately overthrew the Camarilla, expecting to take its place as the body ruling all vampiresbutthatthecovenantwasnotasstrongasitthought.
The question that all Kindred historians, both in and out of the covenant of Society, must ask is, how reliable is the evidence? For many vampires, the idea that evidence may be fabricated, intentionally misrepresented or erroneously interpreted is quick to conjure and hard to dispel. Can the evidence be trusted any more than the memories of the elders?
In the minds of the most conspiratorial of the Damned, the question continues to tie itself into knots the more it is handled. When dealing with the patience and the guile of the Invictus, even unbelievable schemes become fearsome
—becometerriblybelievable.CouldtheInvictushavemanu- factured evidence in the form of texts, tablets, legend and folklore all those centuries ago for the very purpose of corroborating the stories they and their childer would tell in a thousand years? Is it possible that the eldest of Society had the clever minds to plan so far ahead and the willpower to pull it off? How much of the history that has been passed down by the First Estate is propaganda? How much has been slowly, painstakingly skewed over a thousand years for the purpose of creating the very world all the Kindred beneath the Invictus now dance and die in? How much of the intelligence passed down by — or dug up with — the ancient Invictus is an outright lie? How can anyone prove it?
As some scholastic-minded vampires have supposed over the centuries, the Invictus have the Fog of Eternity in their favor in such a scheme. Not only would the Fog of Eternity cloud the memories of Society’s enemies and erode the facts that rivals and skeptics could use to disprove the Invictus accounts of history, but the Fog would aid the fablers among the First Estate in the maintenance of their thousand-year lie.
Imagine an Invictus Prince commissioning his own histories of the nights he rules — all life-like fictions, all very nearly the truth — from the hands of loyal scriveners. A dozen such texts are scattered, hidden and inherited throughout the centuries. The texts age, become rare and are gradually forgotten. Then, a millennium later, vampires of every covenant awaken one by one across the globe. In time, by plan or by fortune, those ancient books are found. The books help the groggy elders fill in the blanks in their minds, and the elders support some — maybe most — of the history contained in those books, which are now priceless artifacts. Without knowing it, a handful of unwitting Kindred have become accomplices in an ancient lie, bearing false witness against history.
Ifeventheschemingvampirewhohatchesthisplandoesn’t recall the truth — doesn’t know what exactly he’s done — how can anyone sniff out his lie? If he believes his own deception, how can anyone know him for the pretender he is? If the world believes his lie, is it truly a lie at all anymore?
a history of the invictus
The Heroic Age
The early Middle Ages were the Heroic Age of the Invictus, when individuals and cyclical dynasties performed great deeds that set the covenant firmly on the road to power. More than any other time, the stories of this period mix history and myth in a way that is hard to separate. Some of the greatest elders of modern nights have reputations founded on tales from this period, so objective historical investigation can be dangerous to one’s social health. On the other hand, conclusively proving that an elder never performed the great deeds attributed to him would be a valuable part of a campaign against him.
The Invictus tell many stories of this period, and only a few representative ones can be recounted here. Modern Kindred, particularly among the Carthians and the Ordo Dracul, have noted that some tales of the Invictus do not fit with histories recognized by kine scholars. To the Carthians, this is clear evidence that the history of the Invictus is little more than a bunch of self-serving myths, a tradition of oral propaganda. To the Invictus, it shows the advantages of having eyewitnesses to events over a thousand years ago still available for consultation. Over time, however, the kine do change their opinions about history, often quite radically, and so debates of historical continuity are unlikely to be resolved soon.
Some vampires, Invictus and not, believe tales such as the following were always intended as parables of political and social power, rather than accounts of genuine history. The facts of these stories may be open to interpretation — they may even be disproved outright — but the boundaries of their truth extend beyond the realms of fact.
Quintus of Alexandria
When the Camarilla fell, the cities of North Africa were among the first to fall into chaos. The nights ran with blood and fire as Kindred brought old feuds out into the open grounds of Kindred society and created new feuds in the struggle for territory and influence. Not a dawn passed that was not seen by at least one of the city’s Kindred, and every day the kine became a little more knowledgeable, a little more scared and a little more dangerous.
In the midst of this anarchy, Quintus of Alexandria, an Invictus ancilla, set out to bring peace. A great Advocate and Speaker, he warned powerful vampires of the risks to their own holdings if the struggle was allowed to continue, and pointed out to the weak that they were disproportionately the ones being sacrificed. He encouraged the formation of alliances and negotiated settlements between warring houses. Wearing the pure white cloth of a candidate for office, Quintus brought enemies together in front of the churches of the city and brokered settlements witnessed by “the stars above our heads, the sands beneath our feet, the sea in our ears and the God at our backs.”
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one chapter
chapter one
Moved by the terms of his oath, members of the Lancea Sanctum came to see his mission as divinely backed, and local Kindred of that covenant slowly fell into place behind him. The Invictus, of course, had always worked for order within the city. One night in December, the Kindred of the city gathered in the Church of the Blessed Virgin, and selected a Bishop of the Lancea Sanctum as their Prince. Quintus pronounced himself satisfied with the restoration of peace, and swore loyalty to the Prince like all the rest.
But, asmight havebeenexpected,aPrincewithsuchstrong loyalties to a single creed could not rule peacefully over a diverse city. Disputes began to flare, and the Kindred noticed that the Prince always resolved them in favor of the Lancea Sanctum. The Kindred of other covenants became discontented with this, and soon took their disputes to Quintus instead. They reminded the other parties of Quintus’ long strivings for peace and his failure to seize power as a result, arguing that he was clearly a neutral broker.
Within a year, the Prince declared that Quintus was not permitted to resolve disputes and was banished from the city. Quintus responded by launching a bid for praxis, a bid supported by many non-Sanctified Kindred and some of the Prince’s own covenant mates. Within two nights, the former Prince had fled, leaving Quintus in undisputed command of the city. The Inner Circle awarded him the title of Marquis of Alexandria in recognition of his great actions.
Note: Stories of similar form are told about several other cities within the former Roman Empire, but Quintus of Alexandria is the most famous. The Marquis of Alexandria survives to present nights, although he is no longer a Prince. Instead, he serves as an adviser to Princes, of whatever
covenant, and most knowledgeable Kindred believe that as long as he does so Alexandria shall remain an Invictus city.
Palladius of Ireland
Remaining an island of barbarians on the edge of the world, Ireland was never conquered by the Roman Empire. In the last nights of the Camarilla, a vampire named Palladius looked beyond its borders, reasoning that strength was likely to be found beyond the increasingly vicious political struggles of a dying organization. He took a ship to Ireland and brought it to land in the middle of a storm. He stepped onto the shore, planting his staff in the sand and declaring, “From shore to shore, surrounded by the sea, this land is the domain of the Invictus. Let none challenge our mastery of the night.” The storm itself was cowed by his words, subsiding in mere moments, the clouds clearing to let the stars shine down on Palladius’ head.
By such an omen, the success of the enterprise was assured, but it was not yet attained. Ireland had no cities and few resident Kindred of its own. Some of these vampires, unlike any in the rest of Europe, were said to take the form of serpents when they rested by day, and in that form basked in the sun. They held that this made them superior to the vampires of the rest of the world, and refused to negotiate in any way with the invader, Palladius. Instead, they swore they would destroy him and all his brood, wiping out the foreigners who dared to stain their island. Regretfully, Palladius prepared for war.
Palladius needed cities for his bases of action, and so his first act was to travel the length and breadth of the
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island, encouraging the people to gather into larger settlements. These settlements, for the most part, formed around abbeys, and Palladius brought in allies from the Lancea Sanctum to help the Invictus administer the land. The relationship was clearly spelled out from the beginning, as the Invictus ruled and the Sanctified provided advice, and the two covenants worked harmoniously together.
Palladius himself sired many childer, the better to spread his influence, and his battles with the undead serpents became the stuff of legends. Finally, the last remnants of the serpents made a stand on the Atlantic coast, their backs to a cliff overlooking the ocean. Palladius stood alone, his childer and allies spread out as sentries to make sure that none of the serpents could flee. Calling on all the powers of his blood, Palladius rent the serpents limb from limb, and their magic was ineffective against him. He hurled the bodies into the ocean, and left the heads on the cliff to face the sunlight, for they would not be able to take refuge as serpents now.
With his final victory, Palladius was granted the title Duke of Ireland, and took his place as Prince of the whole country.
Note: Several stories of Invictus Kindred creating new realms to rule emerge from this period, but the conquest of the whole of Ireland is by far the most spectacular. There are two surviving Kindred who claim to be Palladius of Ireland. Both are allowed the title Duke of Ireland within their respective cities, and each one issues thunderous denunciations of the other and offers a reward for proof of his Final Death. Some Kindred believe that the two were originally part of a cyclical dynasty and that it was the dynasty that conquered Ireland. Others point out the plain parallels to the legend of St. Patrick, and believe that the legend of Palladius is wholly fabricated.
Valea of Byzantium
When the Eastern Roman Empire being transformed into the Byzantine Empire, there lurked a great but mysterious Invictus hero called Valea. Little is known of her before those nights during the reign of Heraclius when she seeped into power, but some say she had lived all of her days in Constantinople before her Embrace. Some take this even further, to say that she had been in the city sinceits first days, and that she slumbers there, still. The mystery of Valea’s originisapartofherheroism:historyforgetsthepowerfulwomen who operate behind the Princes and emperors of the past, but history never forget the women’s work.
Valea was residing within Constantinople, in the rich, palatial havens of ambassadors, diplomats, merchants and advisors to Heraclius himself. In life, she was apparently a homeless waif, begging for bread and stealing wine. In death, she drifted among the wealthy and the powerful as an odalisque, drawing tales of intrigue out of her lovers as she had once drawn money from passersby and stealing blood like she once stole wine. Valea was already smarter and more insidious than most of her prey, but, after years of
lounging in expensive private libraries and attending lavish performances, she was more educated than her paramours as well. Decades of clandestine sex and spying with the renowned men of Byzantium yielded her a collection of information and insight into the city that no one mortal man could ever have been able to accumulate in a lifetime.
In the middle of the 7th century, the Byzantine Emperor Constans II divided Constantinople into a series of mili- tary-controlled sections, called themes. At the time, Constantinople was a swelling city — soon to be the largest is Christendom — and this growing population of urbanizing farmers and craftspeople was taking its toll on the Kindred of the city. The Invictus Prince of Constantinople was facing a rush of new vampires bred by passionate neonates who felt the city could finally support new Kindred made by their hand. With the formation of the Emperor’s new themes, the Invictus were also finding that they had little familiarity and even less influence with the revised municipal order. While Constantinople was solidifying into a crowning city of the world — able to repel numerous Arab assaults and internal crises of iconoclasm and religion — the nighttime city of the Damned was in turmoil. The Prince feared that, without a new structure for the Kindred of Byzantium to dwell within, the Masquerade was at risk. Valea — who was nothing at court and had never met the Prince — heard tell of this and agreed with him.
She also had a plan. She knew several of the Emperor’s advisors and attachés very well — much better than they knew her — so she had information about the philosophy behind the themes and the social mechanisms that made them work. She advised the Prince on ways to organize the domains within Constantinople to keep them from creating friction with the municipal order of the kine. “How do you know so much, girl?” the Prince asked her. “I listened,” she said.
Through the end of the reign of Constans II, through the reign of Leo II in the 8th century, Valea and the Prince restructured the territories and politics of the Invictus in Constantinople. Using the Prince’s experience and Valea’s insight, they refined systems of action and responsibility that reduced the maneuvering room within the covenant for conspirators to plot against the Prince, as had been common since the Damned population swell a hundred years before. The Prince and Valea developed a series of operational social units within the domain — populations defined by their duties rather than their territory — that had to answer directly to the Prince himself. Therefore, conspiracies might swell within the individual competing units, called tagmata (regiments), but they could not reach the Prince without first going through one of his lieutenants who oversaw the tagmata. That lieutenant
— who had to report directly, and alone, to the Prince — would be unlikely to face his lord during a formative coup without revealing himself to the Prince’s formidable mind.
After the mortal Emperor Constantine V returned to Constantinople following his own betrayal and subsequent
one chapter